Dialogue

http://journals.cambridge.org/DIA

Additional services for Dialogue:

Email alerts: Click here

Subscriptions: Click here
Commercial reprints: Click here
Terms of use : Click here

Chomsky's Language and Mind

Harry M. Bracken

Dialogue / Volume 9 / Issue 02 / September 1970, pp 236 - 247

DOI: 10.1017/S0012217300028742, Published online: 09 June 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/

abstract_S0012217300028742

How to cite this article:

Harry M. Bracken (1970). Chomsky's Language and Mind. Dialogue, 9, pp
236-247 doi:10.1017/S0012217300028742

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/DIA, IP address: 130.132.123.28 on 15 May 2015

CRITICAL NOTICE-ETUDE CRITIQUE

CHOMSKY'S LANGUAGE AND MIND*

N OAM Chomsky's Beckman Lectures, delivered at Berkeley in

1967, have been published as Language and Mind. The text makes
a good introduction for the philosopher to Chomsky's linguistic theories
and their impact on philosophy and psychology. He begins: "In these
lectures, I would like to focus attention on the question, What contribu-
tion can the study of language make to our understanding of human
nature" ?
Against a brief sketch of recent scientific history—the development
of S-R behaviorist psychology and the positivistic philosophy and
linguistic theory that went with it—Chomsky suggests that it is now
proper "to turn again to classical questions and to ask what new
insights have been achieved that bear on them, and how the classical
issues may provide direction for contemporary research and study."
(p. 5) The attempts to provide behaviorist accounts of language
learning failed. (Chomsky's 1959 review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior
is now a classic.) They failed because the theories were conceptually
too impoverished to account for the obvious linguistic facts, no less
the more fundamental questions about the nature of human intelli-
gence. Yet it was not fully realized just how serious the situation was.
There was, for example, still hope that the computer would fill in
those gaps which had become evident. Behaviorism plus automata
theory might provide the answers. But they did not. Chomsky believes
they did not because the approach "is not only inadequate but mis-
guided in basic and important ways." Instead, "we must isolate and
study the system of linguistic competence that underlies behavior but that
is not realized in any direct or simple way in behavior." The problem
is that this competence system is qualitatively, and not just quantita-
tively, different from what can be described "in terms of the taxonomic
methods of structural linguistics, the concepts of S-R psychology, or
the notions developed within the mathematical theory of communica-
tion or the theory of simple automata." To put matters even more
strongly: "there is no reason to expect that the available technology

* Chomsky, Noam: Language and Mind, New York: Harcourt Brace &
World, Inc.; Toronto: Longmans Canada, Ltd. 1968. pp. 88. $2.15.

236
 CHOMSKY'S LANGUAGE AND MIND

can provide significant insight or understanding or useful achieve-

ments . . ." (p. 4)
Chomsky would have us turn back to the classical 17 th century tradi-
tion. He has alreday discussed the Cartesian tradition in Cartesian Lingui-
stics1. In Language and Mind he writes: "The Cartesians tried to show that
when the theory of corporeal body is sharpened and clarified and
extended to its limits, it is still incapable of accounting for facts that
are obvious to introspection and that are also confirmed by our
observation of the actions of other humans." (p. 5) A new principle
must accordingly be added, one which has a creative aspect. Chomsky
sees a methodogical parallel between the Cartesian postulation of mind
and Newtonian postulation of an "attractive force acting at a distance."
Such an occult quality (i.e. gravity) was methodologically objection-
able not only to a Cartesian but to Newton as well.
Chomsky acknowledges that the explanatory power of theories using
gravity far exceeded those relying on mind, but he reminds us that the
Cartesians wanted to avoid employing gravity in explanations for reasons
very much like those which were used against "dualist rationalist
psychology." Thus before moving positively to argue for a mentalist
psychology, Chomsky asks us to reconsider what seems to have
happened in 17 th century science. First, to note that Cartesians saw
no way of extending their physical explanations to cover mental
phenomena. Second, to appreciate the quite proper reluctance of
scientists to accept gravity as a postulated explanatory factor. Third,
the acceptance, indeed, the triumph, of gravity largely because the
powerful mathematical model Newton employed carried against all
a priori objections. And finally, that the very success of Newtonian
physics, far from encouraging the postulation of other explanatory
principles, resulted in restricting explanations to Newtonian mechanical
models. Ever since, psychology and philosophy and linguistics have
been trapped in scientific dead-ends largely of their own making—
producing theories of little or no explanatory power out of a misguided
a priori commitment to empiricist methodological principles which are
indefensible on scientific grounds and which fly in the face of our daily
encounters with mental phenomena and language.
Descartes found in man's use of language a generative capacity
whereby we freely and creatively express thought—a capacity which
marks a species specific characteristic of man unlike anything elsewhere

1
Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).
See my review, forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Philosophy.

237
 HARRY M. BRACKEN

in the animal kingdom. On Chomsky's interpretation of Descartes,

three aspects of the "creative" dimension of language use are to be
noted, although the first two do not in themselves exceed the "limits
of mechanical explanation." (i) The "normal use of language is inno-
vative" (p. 10)—i.e. it is generally not repetitive of what we have heard
before. (2) In addition to being "innovative and potentially infinite
in scope," it is free from the control of detectable external or internal
stimuli. (3) The normal use of language possesses the properties of
"coherence" and "appropriateness to the situation" (p. 11).

Honesty forces us to admit that we are as far today as Descartes was three
centuries ago from understanding just what enables a human to speak in a way
that is innovative, free from stimulus control, and also appropriate and
coherent. . . The properties of human thought and human language empha-
sized by the Cartesians are real enough; they were then, as they are now,
beyond the bounds of any well-understood kind of physical explanation.
Neither physics nor biology nor psychology gives us any clues as to how to deal
with these matters, (p. 11)

Chomsky appreciates that the Cartesians understood that animals

other than man could exhibit potentially infinite responses. He expands
the point in his 1969 John Locke lectures:

In short, an animal can operate on the principle of the speedometer—

producing a potentially infinite, in fact in principle continuous, set of signals as
output in response to a continuous range of stimuli—[whereas human language
is a] system that is available for the free expression of thought precisely because
it is not under direct stimulus control, and does not signal "points" on non-
linguistic "dimensions." . . . Every animal communication system that is
known operates on one of two principles: either the principle of the speedo-
meter . . . or else a principle of strictfiniteness;that is, the system consists of a
finite number of signals, each produced under a fixed range of stimulus condi-
tions . . . A person who knows a language has mastered a set of rules and
principles that determine an infinite, discrete set of sentences . . . [and] can
instantaneously interpret an indefinitely large range of utterances, with no
feeling of unfamiliarity or strangeness—and, of course, no possibility of "intro-
specting" into the processes by which the interpretation of these utterances, or
the free and creative use of language, takes place. If this is correct, then it is
quite pointless to speculate about the "evolution" of human language from
animal communication systems. It is an interesting question whether properties
of human language are shared by other cognitive systems. But no dogmatic
assumptions are in order—that much seems clear.2

2
Times Literary Supplement, May, 1969, pp. 523-5.

238
 CHOMSKY'S LANGUAGE AND MIND

According to Chomsky, the Cartesians were on the right track. They

tried to give scientific content to their insights concerning the limits of
mechanical explanation and the use of human language. Not only did
they seek to provide "criteria for intelligent behavior," they also were
interested in "providing an explanation for the possibility of such
behavior." (p. n ) The Port-Royal Grammar3 was the most ambitious
Cartesian effort to provide a philosophical grammar. As Chomsky
sees it, philosophical grammar should be understood as an effort to go
beyond mere description and to provide an explanation, a genuine
scientific theory, for linguistic phenomena, in accordance with the

method of science—which is typically concerned with data not for itself but
as evidence for deeper, hidden organizing principles, principles that cannot
be detected "in the phenomena" nor derived from them by taxonomic data-
processing operations, any more than the principles of celestial mechanics
could have been developed in conformity with such strictures, (p. 14)

The Port-Royal Grammar distinguishes between deep and surface

structures of a language. Having made the distinction, it also introduces
certain "transformational" operations which relate the deep and sur-
face structures, and which help explain the mind's linguistic generative
capacity. But the real trouble with the tradition of philosophical
grammar was its inability to uncover the generative principles at the
heart of linguistic competence—those "deeper, hidden organizing
principles" Chomsky mentioned. Here one should bear in mind the
Newtonian analogue; the Cartesian linguists had no model to use in
connection with that competence, whereas Newton was able to provide
a mathematical model for gravity. In trying to resume the tradition
of universal grammar, Chomsky is seeking to "formulate the necessary
and sufficient conditions that a system must meet to qualify as a poten-
tial human language," (p. 24) i.e. the innate system which accounts
for our linguistic capacity.
The best clue, I think, to Chomsky's own position on this topic
occurs in the concluding note to the second chapter:

. . . we are interpreting "universal grammar" as a system of conditions on

grammars. It may involve a skeletal substructure of rules that any human
language must contain, but it also incorporates conditions that must be met
by such grammars and principles that determine how they are interpreted . . .
[It is thus not simply] a substructure of each particular grammar, a system
3
(Antoine Arnauld et Claude Lancelot) La grammaire g&n&rale et raisonnee,
(1660), in A. Arnauld, Oeuvres (Paris: d'Arnay, 1775-83), T. 41.

239
 HARRY M. BRACKEN

of rules at the very core of each grammar . . . As far as information is available,

there are heavy constraints on the form and interpretation of grammar at all
levels, from the deep structures of syntax, through the transformational
component, to the rules that interpret syntactic structures semantically and
phonetically, (p. 57)

In Aspects,* Chomsky makes it clear that although traditional

universal grammar was primarily concerned with substantive universals,
for example, that "certain specific categories must be central
to the syntax of all languages," he is primarily concerned with formal
universals, i.e. those which involve "the character of the rules that
appear in grammars and the ways in which they can be intercon-
nected." {Aspects, p. 29) As he subsequently notes in Language and Mind:

. . . the existence of definite principles of universal grammar makes possible

the rise of the new field of mathematical linguistics, a field that submits to
abstract study the class of generative systems meeting the conditions set forth
in universal grammar . . . Thus, mathematical linguistics seems for the moment
to be in a uniquely favorable position, among mathematical approaches in the
social and psychological sciences, to develop not simply as a theory of data,
but as the study of highly abstract principles and structures that determine the
character of human mental processes, (p. 63)

In Aspects, Chomsky said that the syntactic component contains

base plus transformational elements. The base possesses the infinite
generative capacity by virtue of the recursive character of its categorial
rules. This sequence of context-free rewriting rules thus allows the
introduction, at the level of deep structure, of, say, an S (entence)
symbol as part of the (rewrite) derivation from another S, a process
which is "iterable without limit." (Aspects, p. 142) The transforma-
tional rules which map deep onto surface structures, can also be
formally characterized, although the precise models to be employed
are matters of discussion. These latter grammatical transformations
are "structure-dependent operations of a peculiar sort that have never
been studied outside of linguistics, in particular, not in any branch of
mathematics with which I am familiar."5 The semantic component
seems primanly to be a function of the deep structure, while surface
structure largely determines the phonetic. Ovbiously, the model is high-
ly complex, and each dimension—syntax, semantics, and phonology has

4
Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1965-
6
Language and Philosophy, ed. S. Hook (New York: NYU Press, 1969) p. 77.

240
 CHOMSKY'S LANGUAGE AND MIND

implications for any account of language acquisition. Those of imme-

diate interest to the philosopher concern the features of universal
grammar. Some of the rules, e.g., many of the transformational,
phonological, etc., will be language dependent. That is, the grammar
of an English speaker, the rules internalized by an English speaker, will
differ considerably from, say, that of a Spanish speaker. But there is
also a question about those principles which are the innate structure,
the native property, of any human—and which thus constitute one
essential ingredient in the acquisition of any natural language.
I have merely touched on a few of the themes in Language and Mind
and have ignored, for example, the terse and lucid discussion of phono-
logy and the cyclic application of transformational rules in the second
chapter. Instead, I have sought to emphasize matters of special
interest to philosophers. The defense of rationalism and the attack on
empiricism are the central issues—with a variety of implications.
First, there is the attack on the methodology of the social sciences
generally, and learning theorists in particular. An attack on the a
priori restrictions which have been imposed upon theory construction,
i.e. against S-R and associationism as constituting the limits of explana-
tion. An attack which exposes empiricist language learning theo-
ries as vacuous. By its dogmatic commitment to empiricist meta-
physics, psychology has simply missed the point. If psychology hopes
to do anything more than spin out trivial theories, it must abandon its
present methodological restraints. It must move in a radically different
direction by focussing attention on linguistic competence, on our
capacity to understand and to speak, without hesitation, an indefinitely
large number of sentences.
Understandably, practitioners in the behavioral sciences are distres-
sed by a sustained attack directed against the very core of their disci-
plines. Their legitimacy is cast in doubt if the methodological principles
of the learning theorists, principles which are virtually presupposed
articles of faith within the ancillary social sciences, can be shown to be
scientifically grossly inadequate. There is of course a very practical and
political dimension to all this. Social scientists have "made it" in
Western societies—and in America, the halls of academe connect with
the halls of the Pentagon.6 A New Class has emerged whose power base
is a putative expertise. Thus the New Mandarin, the "policy scientist,"
whose claim to power rests on his "science," can hardly view Chomsky's

6
Some of Chomsky's views on social, moral and political issues appear in his
American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969).

241
 HARRY M. BRACKEN

discussions of linguistic competence dispassionately. The accuracy and

adequacy of these political comments do not depend on a conceptual
connection binding behaviorism to a particular political system—a
contingent connection will suffice. If Chomsky's refutation of behavior-
ism is sound, quite apart from his so-called "rationalist" claims, then
a whole generation of "experts" has attained massive political power
with false credentials.
Second, there are those who feel uneasy at the thought that some
content can be given to the notion of linguistic universal. Specifically,
those philosophers who assume that Locke dealt the death blow to
innate ideas. Or those linguists who have found in the very richness,
complexity, and variety of natural languages, a barrier to any talk of
universal structures. But Chomsky has read Locke, and presumably
most contemporary linguists are aware of the variety of languages.
Certainly, the theory of grammar that represents the innate structure
must square with all the known facts about language. But to say that
children have a "propensity" to learn, or that they acquire "dispositions"
of one sort or another, is to avoid the scientific task: only a theory
which explicates these "propensities" can claim to be scientific.
After all, the point to the postulation of an innate structure character-
ized by grammatical rules is to explain language acquisition. We are
requires to "postulate an innate structure that is rich enough to account
for the disparity between experience and knowledge." (p. 69) There
is no claim that one consciously follows these rules. Rather, that there
must be a battery of some such rules, activated by the child's initial
encounter with language. Conceivably, an analogous postulation
might be needed in the case of instinctive behavior in animals—say,
the flying of birds, if one were to attempt to provide an explanation of
the acquisition of that skill.

[Thus] it seems that knowledge of a language—a grammar—can be acquired

only by an organism that is "preset" with a severe restriction on the form of
grammar. This innate restriction is a precondition, in the Kantian sense, for
linguistic experience, and it appears to be the critical factor in determining the
course and result of language learning. The child cannot know at birth which
language he is to learn, but he must know that its grammar must be of a pre-
determined form that excludes many imaginable languages. Having selected
a permissible hypothesis, he can use inductive evidence for corrective action,
confirming or disconfirming his choice. Once the hypothesis is sufficiently well
confirmed, the child knows the language denned by this hypothesis; conse-
quently, his knowledge extends enormously beyond his experience and, in fact,
leads him to characterize much of the data of experience as defective and
deviant, (p. 78)

242
 CHOMSKY'S LANGUAGE AND MIND

Third, despite the fact that Chomsky has followed Descartes in

relying on the "creative aspect of language use," despite his critical
comments both about the use of computers in "theory" making and
about the possibility of machine translation, one still hears this theory
described as if it were a behaviorist model designed for incorporation
into a computer program. Admittedly, Chomsky does not follow
Descartes in postulating a theory of mental substance. He supposes that
some day we may be able to provide a more complete theory of
grammar, and thereby a more adequate model of the innate human
structure which provides the basis for our language knowledge. And
perhaps at some stage we will understand how such a model might
be instantiated. What can now sensibly be talked about in mentalistic
terms would then come into the extended province of (physical)
explanation, if, that is, "they can be explained at all . . . But it seems
clear that this issue need not delay the study of the topics that are now
open to investigation, and it seems futile to speculate about matters so
remote from present understanding." (p. 84)
Will we extend the notion of "machine" explanation into what we
now can legitimately (according to Chomsky) call mental ? And if so,
what becomes of the "creative aspect of language use" ? There are at
least two dimensions to this problem. One concerns traditional
philosophical talk about what is conceivable, imaginable, etc. Philos-
ophers have often sought principles which would, on conceptual
grounds, rule things "in" or "out." There has been a continuing
literature on whether Godel's work on the decision problem rules out
the possibility of computers significantly simulating human thought.
Although whether the "impossibility" of, say, machine translation7
is best understood in terms of conceptual, physical, technological . . .
impossibilities, is less important than remembering that the history
of science contains several instances where the conceptual impossibilities
of one generation have become the real possibilities for another. On
the other hand, the "emergent" character which Chomsky attributes
to human thought and language, i.e. the claim that our thought and
language are qualitatively, and not simply quantitatively different
from the supposedly similar systems in animals, reflects his own
conviction that a radically new and non-reductionist model of explana-
tion is required.
7
Cf. Y. Bar-Hillel, "The Present Status of Automatic Translation of
Languages," in Advances in Computers, ed. Franz L. Alt, (New York: Academic
Press, i960), Vol. I, pp. gi-163. See esp. Appendix III, "A Demonstration of
the Nonfeasibility of Fully Automatic High Quality Translation," p. 158 f.

243
 HARRY M. BRACKEN

Moreover our very notion of a machine is in flux. The clock-work

imagery that went with older accounts of machines has perforce
undergone revision. Automata theory has complicated matters.
Philosophical talk about "ghosts in machines" may have had some
impact in days when the concept of a machine was straightforward and
when no one bothered to examine whether Descartes would have
recognized his "myth." But as philosophers we are obliged to try to
take into account revisions which are being imposed upon us. Then we
must try to determine whether our newly extended notions of computa-
bility affect our understanding of the sort of explanatory model
Chomsky is proposing. Specifically, whether this model can be com-
puterized. His answer is negative.
It is tempting to consider as innate structure, say, first order predicate
logic. In fact, such a move would accord with elements within the
Cartesian tradition. But Chomsky sees innate structure contributing to
our understanding of language acquisition. Hence certain claims will
take on the status of formal linguistic universals, claims that reflect those
universal constraints Chomsky mentions. Such claims can hardly have
their status certified on logical grounds—e.g., as tautologies, although
the desire on the part of some philosophical linguists to try to make
transformational grammar fit with Hume is understandable enough.
I have already mentioned the question of formal and substantive
universals. After struggling for generations to provide "logic without
metaphysics" there is resistance to assigning much to innate structure.
A model which is a "bare" computational machine, one which is
a representation of principles which are themselves logical truths,
provides no problems. And it does provide a structure. However, if
logical truths are explicated as tautologies, such "truths" are ultimately
combinatorial—they are "contentless." Such a structure does not
seem to be purchased at a price too high for even the most conscientious
Humean. It also fits with the sentiments of those who hope to be able
to preserve a large part of behaviorist learning theory intact. As Quine
has said in response to Chomsky, behaviorists are committed to innate
structures. After all, there has to be something capable of responding to
the stimuli. But a simple response mechanism plus a "bare" computa-
tional device is plainly to be preferred.
Accordingly, many with a metaphysical stake in behaviorism or in
modern logic would like to see any successful work in transformational
grammar rest upon those older disciplines. In particular, artificial
languages a la Carnap might conceivably have a new relevance. Such
languages also carry with them almost a half century's work on

244
 CHOMSKT'S LANGUAGE AND MIND

computational algorithms. The anti-rationalists among Chomsky's

critics appear to fear that his innate mechanism contains "necessary"
truths reminiscent of Kant's domain of the synthetic a priori. It is one
thing to countenance a "logic machine" plus a very few other principles
—and quite another to suggest an innate complex which makes use
of a generative capacity as merely one component among others.
As I understand it, the phrase structure within the base, while the
object of study by mathematical linguists, must include a range of
selectional restriction rules, and that 'must' may reflect a linguistic
universal. My point is that if the model is to represent linguistic
competence, it must include rules within the innate structure which are
not certified on narrowly logical grounds. The problem emerges again
at the level of the transformational rules. As noted, these have appar-
ently not even been mathematicized. The move to transformational
grammar supplements Chomsky's earlier rejection of machine transla-
tion. If transformational rules are required, their introduction would
appear to foreclose decisively on any possibilities for linguistic cyber-
netics in the foreseeable future. Hence the counter-move to try to
expand the role of the phrase structure grammar component (where
there is still some vague hope of retaining a pure "logic machine"
model) to include what Chomsky places in the transformational
domain. I think it is clear that Chomsky's opponents will make every
effort to rehabilitate the behaviorist learning model using computers
and whatever new weapons become available, in order to try to show
that "in principle" there ought to be other solutions.
Even among the transformationalists there are the seeds of still
another philosophical controversy. Note this passage by Emmon Bach:
The base component suggested here looks in some ways very much like the
logical systems familiar from the work of modern logicians like Rudolf Carnap,
Hans Reichenbach, and others. In particular, such systems do not have any
subdivision of 'lexical items' into nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Much more
basic is the distinction between variables, names, . . . and general 'predicates'
which can be n-placed with respect to the number of terms that can occur as
their arguments. It should not be surprising that a system of universal base
rules should turn out to be very close to such systems, which are after all the
result of analyzing the most basic conceptual relationships that exist in natural
languages. Such a system expresses directly the idea that it is possible to
convey any conceptual content in any language, even though the particular
lexical items available will vary widely from one language to another—a direct
denial of the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its strongest form.8
8
Universals in Linguistic Theory, ed. Emmon Bach & Robert T. Harms
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968), pp. 121-2.

245
 HARRY M. BRACKEN

What is "more basic" ? Is it a question of "conceptual relationships" ?

What considerations are relevant to each question? Philosophers will
be interested in the light linguists can cast on these matters, and in turn
should remind linguists of the history of disputes over proper and
common names, substance and quality, subject and predicate, etc.,
disputes which were already discussed at a sophisticated level by the
medievals. Perhaps a structure with a type distinction between two
levels of terms is indeed the most basic. But the recent history of logic
suggests that pressures will shortly emerge, pressures of a nominalist
sort, to grant priority to one or the other level. Such issues are not to be
simply resolved by reference to logical elegance. How one orders one's
priorities with respect to logic, linguistics, ontology, and psychology
calls for considerable subtlety, and it is unlikely that the conditions
needed for an experimentum aims will shortly be available either for
these specific questions or the more general ones raised by Chomsky.
However, the thrust of my very tentative speculations on the present
stage of the dispute is that Chomsky's model may be seen as Kantian in
that he argues on transcendental grounds for a set of a priori principles.
To the dismay of many philosophers, the peculiar status of these
principles simply cannot be explicated within the broad guide lines
of the empirical and logical traditions. Second, Chomsky's position is
anti-cybernetic. Linguistic competence, or more generally, mind,
cannot be simulated on the standard models of ghostly machines. It is
difficult to see how the competence model Chomsky envisions could,
except in the most extravagant sense of "in principle," find a machine
instantiation. Hence the appeal to Descartes. Like Chomsky, the
Cartesians rejected as scientifically inadequate reductionist mechanical
models of psychological explanation. Third, they appreciated that an
explanatory model of mind, radically different from that of "body" had
to be provided. Our own talk about the Cartesian "ghost in the
machine" is behaviorist fabrication. Fourth, the Cartesians preferred
no explanation to a wrong one.
This slim volume (88 pp.) provides an excellent introduction to
some of the philosophical aspects of Chomsky's theories. There is a
minimum of technical apparatus, and as we have come to expect from
Chomsky, a wealth of insight and information as well as bibliography
is included in his ample footnotes. The overall theme is a call to intellec-
tual revolution: any study of man's nature that purports to be scientific
must provide a scientific explanation of linguistic competence. If such
a study begins with a priori restrictions of associationist or behaviorist
sorts it is precluded from seeking the genuinely explanatory principles

246
 CHOMSKY'S LANGUAGE AMD MIND

needed to account for competence. Thus a study must note the qualita-
tive differences between human and animal communication systems,
differences which are both radical and self-evident—unless, of course,
one insists on approaching the comparative data with a priori empiri-
cist doctrines. Chomsky, like Descartes, would have us take our
experience seriously. Hence the best hope of yielding a real explanation
of man's species specific capacity, his linguistic competence, appears
to be in the theory of transformational grammar and the new Coperni-
can revolution it involves. In the meantime a myriad of problems are
arising, many of which need the attention of philosophers.
In conclusion, a non-philosophical word for those who doubt whether
Chomsky has anything to say to philosophers. The tone and quality of
the "arguments" directed against Chomsky in the symposium volume,
Language and Philosophy, (see note 5) reveal how profoundly threatened
the "Genteel Tradition" is. To find Quine salvaging behaviorism by
extending it to cover "all reasonable men," or Goodman solemnly
taking Locke as an authority in the analysis of innate ideas, and to find
other critics in equally incredible positions suggest that Chomsky's
critics share at least one quality: rage. My own guess is that the stakes
in these debates are high because Chomsky is interpreted as challenging
both the intellectual adequacy of much of contemporary philosophy as
well as its ideologically supportive role within Anglo-American social
and political institutions. Perhaps we should remember that Descartes
had similar problems with his critics and their institutions.

HARRY M. BRACKEN
McGill University

247